#behaviour

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Read about my journey into becoming a creative freelancer, interviews and reviews with great authors, and advice on writing and creative living.

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Aug 28, 2018
3 min

Stuff

On Sunday, we finally let ourselves back in. Six months and three weeks after we locked the door behind us and set off round the world, we came home. The flat was full of echoes, of the strange feeling that other people had existed in our space for all that time. You could see it in the extra wear on the kitchen worktop, the limescale lines around the base of the taps. All those months ago… It felt strange, at first. Not that there was much time to take it all in. First, we h

Aug 5, 2018
4 min

Unexpected Dangers

One of the reasons people thought we were mental to travel around the world with a baby (and there were many) was because of the perceived danger. The world is a hazardous place if you are small and inquisitive. But abroad, those risks become much higher, or at least they can seem it because they are far from home. The flights, the germs, the foreign illnesses, the dangerous creatures (yes, Australia, I’m looking at you) the sea, the swimming pools, the cars, the trains, the

Jul 29, 2018
3 min

Hanging It Up

It dangles at the end of the bed. The plastic clips rattle against the bed frame when I walk past it. The straps have yielded to the stretch of my baby’s changing size, the buckles clasped around me in snow, wind and sun. It’s been left there like a forgotten thing – the sling that we used to carry her round in every single day. Now we are home, a pram is providing her transport. It’s much easier for many reasons. We don’t have to carry the weight of her all the time, there’s

Apr 30, 2017
4 min

Power – Gender and Naomi Alderman’s Novel

In terms of power and control, it’s a scary time. Unity and strength seem to be giving way to individual gripes and complaints, people turned against each other to shout blame for the lives they’re not happy with. Unstable times lead to unlikely heroes. People currently in power are those that we wouldn’t have dreamed of electing or giving a voice to. Suddenly, a victory for a abusive right-wing president seems the ‘popular’ choice. Keeping the current UK government, the cham

Feb 5, 2017
3 min

Making Creativity – How to Boost Your Creative Output

You can’t make creativity, but you can make cake. I have two days a week to write. Two glorious, empty, indulgent, frustrating days. Sometimes, the word count is high. My fingers are flying over the keys, I get to the end of it and bask in the glory of my beautiful sentences. Other times, I write pretty much nothing, then hastily dash out a blog, or do some Tweedecking (like DJing, but way less cool) in a desperate attempt to have something to show for an eight-hour stretch.

Jan 26, 2017
5 min

Femspreading – Making Space For Women

Genderspecs – changing gendered perspectives, one blog at a time. It’s always a joyous moment when I receive an email telling me that the next podcast episode of ‘The Guilty Feminist’ is out. This time the theme was ‘Taking Up Space,’ and how women don’t tend to do it quite as much as men. I’ve suffered from bad shoulders for years. Part of it is the curse of the writer/student I became in later life – carrying my laptop about on my back like a tortoise with a portable office

Jan 3, 2017
4 min

Books to Build a Person

In the middle bedroom of my mum’s house is a treasure trove. A collection of the books that me and my two sisters read when we were growing up. Oh, the adventures to be found. In one place is What-A-Mess, the Afghan hound who always ended up in a state, despite the purity of his breeding. In another is Mildred Hubble, the Worst Witch, who was perpetually disorganised, had her hair undone, was late for lessons, had her socks round her ankles and never quite got her spells righ

Dec 16, 2016
3 min

Taking Time Out – Retreat in Any Way You Can

December is upon us. While apparently the idea that time goes quicker as you get older is a myth (it’s just because you’ve seen more actual time, apparently) it still seems that the years are stacking up at a rate that I can’t quite keep up with. Every hour, day, week, month, I get to the end and sometimes it feels like all I have is a list of things I didn’t manage to do. People I didn’t see, projects I didn’t finish, marking I didn’t do, films I didn’t see, phone calls I di

Feb 15, 2016
4 min

It’s All About Perspective

One of the most powerful things in the world to experience is someone else’s perspective. It’s also one of the most frustrating. As anyone who’s encountered a view or opinion that they find utterly objectionable on social media, the TV, overheard in a bus (a broadcast of anything Donald Trump has ever said) the initial reaction is that they are wrong. Utterly, idiotically wrong. The interesting thing is, no-one thinks they’re ill-informed. No-one thinks they’re simply regurgi

Nov 6, 2015
4 min

What the ‘Consent’ Conversation is Missing

Recently, a man complained about being forced to go to ‘consent’ lessons at University. I can see his point. Not only is it a little bit insulting, but it’s probably a little bit late. But what else are Universities supposed to do? When one in seven women in University will experience some form of sexual assault, it’s not surprising they’ve decided to do something about it. To me, the word ‘consent’ is, in itself, a little misleading. It likens any sexual activity to a trans

Mar 8, 2015
6 min

WOW

Just, WOW. The Women of the World festival at the Southbank Centre in London is in its 5th year, and going strong. It lasts for an entire week, and involves hundreds of women and men from around the globe. For a mere £20, you get a full day pass on the Saturday or the Sunday. This gives you the opportunity to see bands and choirs, take self-defence classes, do yoga, laugh along to comedy, listen to inspirational women discuss current issues, take part in workshops, and listen

Feb 23, 2015
3 min

Myself and I

I’m reading Margaret Atwood On Writers and Writing. It’s lovely to read an author musing on being the very thing that they are without sounding too grandiose or other wordly. Long have we been exposed to the accepted narrative that The Writer operates on some higher and more noble plane than mere mortals, and it’s pleasantly comforting to hear such a great writer talk about the insecurities her young self felt when treading out into these rather murky waters. Something that r

Jan 26, 2015
4 min

Being A Man

We all like being in a club. It gives us a sense of belonging, camaraderie, having someone on your side. It also usually helps if you have an opponent you can set yourself up against. The one ‘club’ that is often presumed to be pre-ordained, is that of your gender role. I’m not sure it’s quite so straightforward as that. Just the other night, me and my friends got into a discussion about Gigi Gorgeous, a transgender Youtube sensation (apparently) whose boyfriend insists that

Jan 14, 2015
4 min

New Year, Same Trousers

This was the first January I’ve managed not to feel guilty in possibly my entire adult life (the exact beginning of this is debatable, but still). Having said that, in previous years, my guilt was always tainted with annoyance. It is grossly unfair that merely days before the very same media who were shoving cake, cream and alcohol down our necks are suddenly chastising us for being fatties. Christmas and the surrounding months are such a strange time of year – maniacal enthu

Sep 2, 2014
4 min

The Not-So-Tortured Artist

Of course we’re all familiar with the supposed formula for artistic success. Largely, unhappiness. From the huge list of writers (male and female) who were alcoholics, to the artists who cut off their ears/fingers/genitalia(rap artists at least). The most tragic of these are of course, cases of suicide. As the terrible news of the treasured comic and actor Robin Williams emerged, it seemed to confirm that the brightest lights do indeed fly closest to the sun. So where does th

Oct 19, 2011
2 min

Behaving Yourself

The recently published ‘behaviour checklist’ (or ‘naughty list’ in The Sun) will no doubt prompt another debate about poor discipline in our country’s classrooms. Many things seem to prompt this discussion, such as riots in the summer, school exclusion figures or any other number of general societal ills we can blame on those ‘badly behaved’ youngsters. This is invariably twinned with some sort of wistful reminiscing about how we were all so angelic in our day. For teachers,

Sarah Scribbles